Blooming Buds: Group Therapy for SLI

A wide variety of Speech and Language problems have been identified since decades. The tempo of such problems is found to be increasing in an alarming rate and “Specific Language Impairment” is one of the most common among these. The term refers to a specific impairment in spoken language ability when there is no obvious accompanying condition such as Mental Retardation, Neurological damage or Hearing Impairment. Successful communication comes from the mastery of subtleties of interactive language. Therefore a group therapeutic intervention project has been taken up by National Institute of Speech and Hearing for SLI population.

The project was inaugurated on 8/3/2013. Participation in the program is based on the detailed evaluation across a varied range of skills.

SLI group therapy program are provided for children between the ages 3-5yrs.

The major focus of Specific Language Impairment Unit (SLI Unit) is to deliver an intensive therapy package to facilitate language emergence. Group therapy sessions focus on communicative parameters such as communicative intent, lexical semantic abilities and improving the mean length of utterance. Also we concentrate on socialization skills, cognition and prosodic aspects. In contrast to one to one direct therapy, group therapy offers a direct parent education with observation of therapy sessions to enable the learning of stimulation techniques for use within the home.